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About John Pitcher

John Pitcher is the chief classical music, jazz and dance critic as well as co-founder of ArtsNash. He has been a classical music critic for the Washington Post, the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, National Public Radio’s Performance Today (NPR), ArtNowNashville.com and the Nashville Scene. His writings about music and the arts have also appeared in Symphony Magazine, American Record Guide and Stagebill Magazine, among other publications. Pitcher earned his master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he studied arts writing with Judith Crist and Phyllis Garland. His work has received the New York State Associated Press award for outstanding classical music criticism.

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Random Stories From the Archives

When Blair School of Music violinist Cornelia Heard announces she’s giving a concert with a few of her family and friends, classical music fans pay attention. Her closest associates, after all, include some of the classical music world’s most distinguished performers. This Saturday evening, Heard will present one of her family-and-friends concerts at Blair’s Turner Recital […]

Today is considered the 449th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. On Sunday the Nashville Shakespeare Festival presented Bardaroo! at Cumberland Park. The event, which was also part of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s year-long silver anniversary festivities, included Denice Hicks, the festival’s artistic director, staging the “Biggest Balcony Scene EVER” as Hicks and a host of others performed […]

Zero Dark Thirty should do well at the box office just because of the controversy it has kicked up. Director Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting look at the hunt for Osama bin Laden (aka “Usama bin Laden” or “UBL” as he’s often cited in the movie) has found many critics inside the government and out because its […]

Gilberto Gil brought the joyous, rhythmically fluid music of Brazil’s northeast regions to Nashville Monday night. He gave those in attendance at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center a combination concert and history lesson. Gil’s ongoing commentary provided a breakdown of his homeland’s musical/cultural diversity. Meanwhile, he and his superb band performed multiple samples of the various […]

Whether Ann Patchett discourses about the merits of opera or recounts her adventures in a rented RV, her compelling new book, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (Harper, 320 pps.), hums with the pitch-perfect prose evident in her best-selling novels Bel Canto and the recent State of Wonder. This 2013 compilation of previously […]

It’s opera, not opry, this Saturday at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum as the HCA/TriStar Nashville Opera ON TOUR production of Little Red’s Most Unusual Day offers a free public performance. That 10 a.m. show will be the first of seven public presentations. The 40-minute piece is John Davies’ operatic twist on […]

Haifaa al-Mansour’s Wadjda is certainly a landmark look at a restrictive society, but in giving us the story of a 10-year-old Saudi Arabian girl’s quest for a bike we get a movie that speaks, to quote the director, “of universal themes of hope and perseverance” to which people of all countries and cultures can relate. […]

The world premiere of a film shot here in 2012 opens the 45th Annual Nashville Film Festival (NaFF) today. The expanded festival runs through April 26. The Identical, an appealing family drama about musically-gifted separated twins with a cast that features Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Seth Green, Joe Pantoliano and newcomer Blake Rayne in the leading […]

Wicked is one of the most popular (sing it) musicals of all time. Running since 2003, and previously here on tour in 2009 and 2011, the show’s also won three Tonys and six Drama Desk Awards. With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin) and a book by Winnie Holzman (My So-Called Life), this […]

ATLANTA – Last year, the Alliance Theatre brought in the star power of John Mellencamp and author Stephen King. Next year, that star power will come in a new musical co-written by pop music star Barry Manilow and a show that features tap dance legend Maurice Hines. The Alliance unveils its 2013-14 season today. The season will […]

Far from the dreaded show choirs and a cappella groups of school campuses, Third Coast Vocals will bring professional-caliber vocal jazz back to the Nashville Jazz Workshop Friday, Oct. 26 at 8 p.m. This will be the group’s first Snap on 2 & 4 performance in two years. In 2009, Nashville jazz scene staples Jeff […]

Music City Baroque has just announced its 2013-14 season, and good tidings abound in the ensemble’s lineup. Nashville’s premier period-instrument group will be bringing back its ever-popular “Messiah Sing-In” at Christ Church Cathedral. A new guest director will also make her debut. Allison Edberg, a highly regarded Baroque violinist, will lead Music City Baroque at […]

It comes as no surprise that a musician as remarkable as the violinist Carolyn Huebl would present the most thoughtful and adventurous recital heard in Nashville in recent memory. That she accomplished this feat with a program of 1930s-era ephemera was unexpected. Huebl was at Turner Hall on Monday night, presenting one of the Blair School […]

Street Theatre Company has released their 2013 season lineup. What follows are the shows, dates and STC-provided descriptions for a wide-ranging mix of classic and contemporary fare: Love Letters (Feb. 1-9, 2013) A unique and imaginative theatre piece that is comprised of letters exchanged over a lifetime between two people who grew up together, went […]

The Nashville Film Festival (NaFF) announced the winners of the Ground Zero Tennessee Spirit Awards and the Tennessee Horizon Audience Awards tonight at NaFF Cinema at Walk of Fame Park in Downtown Nashville. The Ground Zero Tennessee Spirit Awards were presented by Bob Jackson, owner of Ground Zero. The Tennessee Horizon Awards were presented in […]

We are reminded in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown that happiness is “anyone and anything at all that’s loved by you.” Nashville Children’s Theatre creates that happiness with their revival of the sweet-natured musical. The “Peanuts” gang has been going strong since the late Charles M. Schulz introduced them in a 1950 comic strip. […]

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake may well be the quintessential classical ballet. This sumptuous spectacle seemingly has everything a balletic bird watcher could want: beautiful ballerinas in snow white tutus; a fairy tale prince and heartless villain; and, of course, the famed Russian composer’s hyperemotional score. But what most recommends Nashville Ballet’s current production is […]

With awards season in full swing the Belcourt Theatre will soon present Oscar Picks. It’s an assortment of 2013 Academy Award-nominated films as well as selected Best Picture Winners from past years. Oscar Picks runs from Jan. 25-Feb. 23 and includes many of this year’s nominated films in various categories: Best Picture nominees Beasts of […]

“You know I’ve wondered why it is we have children,” Evelyn Stoker (Nicole Kidman) muses at one point in Park Chan-wook’s bone-chilling Stoker. “And the conclusion I’ve come to is – we want someone to get it right this time.” Well, looked at one way the well-to-do Stokers may have succeeded beyond their wildest – […]

There are undoubtedly times when musicians in a small, local orchestra wonder if there will ever be as many people in the audience as on the stage. At one time, such thoughts must have gone through the minds of musicians in the Gateway Chamber Orchestra. This terrific ensemble had a loyal following in its hometown […]